Business information management at a dead end
The Tax Department is an organization with frequent reorganizations. After the last reorganization of management and automation in 2001 it appeared that a part of the demand of the information system had been housed in the IT department: business information management got to a dead end. From 2007 onwards business information management is again in the spotlights and program manager Tom Heisterkamp received the assignment to reorganize business information management. He hopes to be finished by the end of 2009. “In the past years the Tax Department has been frequently in the news in a negative way. We appeared to be masters in the repair of damage, but appeared not to be able to solve the structural causes. What did not go well? In any case, there was something wrong with the relation between B/CICT (the Center for ICT, the internal supplier, ed.) and B/CA, the Tax Department/Central Administration (the business, ed.). We decided to use the BiSL-framework. Also in the NORA, the Nederlandse Overheid Referentie Architectuur [Dutch Government Reference Architecture], BiSL is recommended. We have used the reference work of Van der Pols in combination with several best practices. That is how we used the role description to set up our own function matrix and the book to get a complete picture of all the processes and activities to be executed.”

The same business domains
To improve the communication between B/CICT and B/CA the Tax Department has decided to use the same subdivision in business domains. B/CA distinguishes five business domains: return, assessment, customs, benefits and data. The B/CICT now also uses this subdivision, due to which the cooperation can be streamlined much better.

Size requires differentiation
It was furthermore decided to house the activities of the BiSL process cluster Use Management with B/CA and that of the process cluster Functionality Management, whereby the information system is changed, to be housed with the B/CPP, the Centre for Process and Product Development. “Because of the size of our business this split can be easily made. For Use Management alone we expect to deploy two hundred fifty people. For some question flows, such as request Declaration of Employment Status, all user questions can be answered by one person. But for assessment taxes, for example, we expect to need forty people, only for answering user questions. We have also prepared separate role descriptions by process. An officer performs either the process User support or Business data management or Operational supplier management. With the book in our hand we went ahead to make a good description of what an officer should do exactly. Take, for example, the proactive monitoring of the data integrity. That is something we are not doing at the moment. So we include it in the function profile.”

Soon the tasks will be better distributed. Everyone knows of one another who is responsible for what and where he can go with his question. Who knows, maybe the Tax Department will return to the situation of before 2001, the demand will be back again with the demand and the repair of damages will be something of the past.